So has anyone ever pulled the plug on a layout in the planning stages?
My Conrail Fenway Division has died already as I was conducting inventory on my rolling stock and realized that I would be storing several thousand dollars worth of equipment without ever using it on the layout. While I could either just run it for fun or sell it, both of those options seemed less desirable to me than going back to my old layout idea that already has some basic trackwork completed, and has been just gathering dust in my appartment’s storage locker.
Thankfully all I’m going to loose by not building the Fenway Div. is about a year of planning and some paint. All of the new rolling stock I have bought can be either used as is, or repainted and detailed for a different road to work on my freelanced modern southern Ontario layout.
Many times. Even on my current layout, I scrapped the plans eleven or twelve times before settling on one I liked. Even then, I changed it several times during building.
I like to say that my layout plans are set in Jell-O. The configuration of the subgrade is finalized when it’s screwed to the risers, and turnout locations are negotiable until I solder the frog closure rails. More than once, I have inserted a modification that wasn’t part of the original plan, simply because the change was an improvement. (A planned short crossover between two tracks climbing grades in opposite directions gradually lengthened itself into an electrical section long enough to hold a mainline freight, thereby leveling an unwanted summit and bringing the turnouts around to places where they can be reached for maintenance. As a bonus, now that I have that train-length holding track, it has also eased some scheduling constraints!)
For every layout that I started to build, I probably scrapped a hundred pages of plans that didn’t pan out. Some were over-ambitious attempts to cram too much into limited space. Others were attempts to adapt published plans that weren’t really compatible with my prototype’s known operations. All in all, I probably used up about a tree worth of paper creating dream plans that never got built.
Nowadays I lay out a generous approximation, then make full size plans on card stock with bent flex track immediately in advance of final construction.
The equipment would be non-prototypical on the Boston layout, where it would fit in just fine on the Canadian one. While I could just add more storage tracks onto the Fenway Division, the equipment on it still would not get used in opperating sessions and would gather dust. While on the Canadian layout, almost all of my rolling stock could be useful on the layout.
Wouldn’t the thing to do is build a layout or a facsimile, THEN go out and buy some equipment to run on this layout, it seems you have things backwards, although I still cannot reason why people hoard and spend thousands of dollars on cars and locos simply to store them away when there is no possible way they could ever put them to use, this seems very prevalent in this hobby( and expensive) and has never made any sense to me or others, why would a layout that could handle 50 or 60 cars have need for 300 cars that sit idle in boxes, now I await the responses to justify this habit.
Yes, I was forced to regroup and re-plan a layout due to an untimely move!
Long story short: Just about a year of layout planning was completed and the room floor was re-finished for what would be the new train room, all the old carpet was removed and new tile was put in, then Hurricane Katrina hit on Aug, 29, 2005. This was in New Orleans in a 15’ X 14’ room.
Fast forward: Taking the old plan and after 3 months of reworking the same ideas into our house in Wake Forest the new train room is 21’ X 15’ X 16’. Check out my current progress on my Piedmont Division web site (link below).
Oh yeah…but more often in the pre layout construction phase. Noteably:
A 6x12 around the walls HO layout in a reclaimed coal bin was aborted after planning and installing wiring and lighting, due to loss of job and moving
A small 5x8 HO two piece folding table layout abandoned after planning and building one of the tables, due to moving from an apartment to a new home with a dedicated train room space.
The new house 13x15 whole room HO layout abandoned in the planning phase when I married and gained a teenage daughter needing the room.
After building a story and a half garage with the intention of using the 14x20 second floor room for trains, designing the layout, and starting to accumulate benchwork material, that layout was abandoned due to job loss and moving again.
The next house (this one) has a full basement, and the plan was a 2 wall, 2 penninsula HO dog bone. Water heater moved, metal cabinets intended for the base moved to the basement and about to be installed…sudden drastic worsening of degenerative joint disease makes more than rare trips down and up the stairs impossible.
After 3 years of giving up on ever having a layout, and being seriously depressed over having to give up a 25+ year dream, wife convinces me that I should build a small layout on the diningroom table…to make that reasonable, I switched to N scale. In the 9 months since, I don’t even want to think about how many layouts I’ve cooked up on XtrkCad…decided “yeah, that’s the one”…only to abandon it and start over days/weeks later.
Right now I have a KISS layout plan that I like (though probably no one else would), and hopefully this weekend will be able to get the foam sheets here so I can start working before I can change my mind again.